The new Hibs SPL fixtures were released today. The first game of the season will be against Motherwell at Fir Park on 14 August 2010 with 3 out of the next four at Easter Road.

The second game of the season is against Rangers at Easter Road which makes it a tricky first 6 games with Celtic in Glasgow on the 25th of September.

There is a New Year game on the 1st of January 2011 against Hearts. It’s the first time for a while it’s actually been on the 1st, I expect it’ll be moved for TV. The boxing day game is at home to Aberdeen and we’ve got Dundee United at home on the 29th.

I recently received an email asking if this site would support some guy on his crusade to prove that referees show a bias towards Rangers. I had to ask a few times before he supplied examples and it turned out he was a Celtic fan who was logging every vaguely dodgy decision made in Rangers’ favour.

I couldn’t help out the poor chap. As much as I do believe there is a bias in favour of Rangers, I think it applies equally to Celtic and to a (much) lesser extent Hibs and Hearts. I don’t believe that it is a deliberate conspiracy by referees, however.

Referees have always been the source of much fans ire. We’ve heard all the eyesight related jokes down the years. Blind jokes, glasses jokes etc. In recent times Specsavers have even sponsored Scottish referees. I don’t believe that the referees in Scotland have all had laser eye surgery or anything but I don’t think they’ve really become worse either.

The game has become faster, the rules more complex, pressure from the media has intensified and demands from the SFA have increased. On top of this, players have become more demanding, better at play acting and better able to manipulate the rules and more sophisticated at influencing the poor old ref. In the meantime we still expect him to give perfect decisions 100% of the time.

When I am sitting at home watching a game with replays in slow motion from every conceivable angle, often I still can’t decide on the correct decision. Would I be able to make that decision with 50,000 fans screaming at me and a group of aggressive players in my face whilst trying to maintain some degree of order at the same time. The answer is, without a doubt, no.

I think that when playing at home Rangers and Celtic get a bigger portion of these sorts of decisions where the referee genuinely doesn’t know what the correct decision is. He has to make a decision in a split second and sub-consciously, it’s easy to be swayed by the 50,000 home fans who all screamed for the handball or penalty or whatever at the same time. This probably happens at most grounds – the bigger your support the more likely you are to get decisions in your favour.

It was announced a short time ago by Sky News that Heart of Midlothian manager Csaba Laszlo has left Hearts.

He’s been moaning for months about not being given any funds by Vladamir Romanov and recent confirmation that there will be new faces at Tynecastle during the transfer season may have been the straw that broke the camels back.

Putting aside the question of whether football clubs should have to pay for policing at all, I was always under the impression that policing costs were really high. In reality, they’re simply not. Even in the big games we’re talking around 40p per supporter. Considering the game against Hearts that is mentioned above was, I think, £27 for away fans – it’s not a significant overhead.

There is now a fairly decent selection of Hibs books available on the web. The daddy of them all is of course The Making of Hibernian by Alan Lugton – three volumes of the history of Hibernian Football Club. Sadly, volumes 2 and 3 are really hard to get hold of (Volume 1 can be purchased on the link below). They turn up from time to time on Ebay but can’t be found on retailers such as Amazon or Blackwells. I’ve no doubt that a single tome of all three books would sell a bucket load some Christmas. I’m crossing my fingers for 2010.

Here are a few you might be interested in, please feel free to recommend more via the comments.